I went on vacation, remember?

I just failed to ever talk about it! I will be condensing our vacation pictures and things in a few blog posts, mostly because I haven’t been able to find any time to go through the 900+ pictures we took. Also because I know you all don’t want to hear about my vacation for a week! Anyway, I’ll start off with the first couple of days. The first day we started out and h eaded up to Boise, where we had lunch by the Boise River. I’d never been that way in Idaho and it was kind of interesting. Kind of desolate too for a while there. We weren‘t there for very long, just to eat lunch and go to a yarn store, but I don’t think I much like Idaho. After that we headed to Bend Oregon where we stayed one night. I really, really liked it there. We had dinner at the Bend Brewing Co., which was fantastic! Then we wandered and drove around a bit, trying to find a playground for The Baby. We finally did, but it was dark by then so we played a little and then headed back to the hotel. The next day we headed out of town for Crater Lake. It was a really nice drive through the forest. Halfway there we ran into a protest field. It was really weird, there were all sorts signs that had different stuff painted on them. Too bad we missed the one about the Starship Enterprise!

Crater Lake was really awesome. And windy! I had never seen anything like it, and I couldn’t believe I’d never heard about it either. The whole thing was formed by a volcano that erupted and collapsed into itself over 7700 years ago and the cliffs surrounding the lake are up to 2000 feet high. The water is so blue and beautiful, I’d never seen water like that before. The mountains we were in were also amazinglly beautiful. We wanted to drive all the way around the lake, but we also wanted to do a short hike and we didn’t end up having time to do it all. Crater Lake is really breathtaking and serene and I believe it is a must-see for anyone given the chance! The hike was really cool, and The Baby was really well behaved considering she was spending entirely too much time confined to her car seat – I couldn’t have asked for more! Oregon has some really nice big trees, too

Well that’s the condensed version of the first day and a half of our Oregon/California vacation. Next time I’ll tell you about the redwoods and the coast!

Crater Lake was my first National Park, I was like 8. I’ll never forget it. The water is just indescribably blue. Incredible!
Plus, caldera=wicked cool geology!
Did you know that Yellowstone itself is a huge caldera? Doesn’t that ROCK!!!